Report: Catalonia, a catalyst for the chemical industry

Catalonia makes a lot of sense for companies aiming to expand their chemical operations. According to the report The Chemical Industry in Catalonia by Catalonia Trade & Investment, it’s the second largest manufacturing sector in the Catalan economy, thus giving a sense of its importance, and reason for the robust public-private partnerships supporting the ecosystem.

Furthermore, it’s also Catalonia’s first exporting industry with 48.2% of total Spanish exports originating from the region over the last 10 years.

Internally supported

Between Catalonia’s three different chemical hubs – located in Barcelona, Tarragona and the Vallès – you can find everything you need as regards industry support and service at all levels of the value chain. The value chain itself ranges from raw materials and petro-chemicals to basic and speciality companies and finally specialised logistics.

Tarragona is also noteworthy in that it is home to Chemmed, an industrial, logistics, academic and scientific chemical cluster composed of more than 100 chemical companies.

The entire Catalan chemical sector is also enhanced by renown applied and basic research groups supporting tech transfer and a complete network of scientific and tech centres representing Catalonia’s R&D programme.

Internationally prepared

As regards logistics, Catalonia has an excellent infrastructure with the capacity to reach over 400 million consumers in Europe and in North Africa, and the Mediterranean basin in under 48 hours.

And in terms of the chemical industry, it is worth noting that both the Port of Barcelona and the Port of Tarragona have class-leading multimodal distribution facilities for the chemical sector and are connected to 825 other ports around the world.

Chosen by the best

In the 2016-2020 period, Catalonia has been the third region in Western Europe in the number of investment projects by chemical leaders and fifth in terms of capital investment.

Apart from the region’s specific expertise in the sector, that fact that Barcelona’s open international business climate (the city ranks ninth in the world for investment projects) also empowers the chemical sector here as a whole.

International presence in the Catalan chemical sector is largely concentrated in the basic chemicals field where we can find companies such as BASF, Bayer, Messer, Kao, Du Pont and Ercros.

Download the report The Chemical Industry in Catalonia